The Oath

‘Doesn’t matter, does it? Not to a knight or a lord. They just look at me and see a peasant who can’t be trusted.’

Otho sucked at his front teeth. ‘I think you’re missing something here, Rob. If this was the other way round, and the King was waiting for you to be brought to him, maybe you’d be right. But I reckon the one who’s worried most now is that one there.’ He pointed at Despenser.

‘You really think so?’ asked Vyke, cheering up.

‘Yeah. He’s shit scared.’ Otho studied the man for a while, and then spat. ‘Nah, you’ll be fine Rob. They’ll hardly even notice you.’

Second Monday after the Feast of St Martin[49]

Hereford

They reached the city in the middle of the morning. Trotting down towards the gate, Baldwin saw a party of men riding out to meet them. If he could, he would have turned his horse and galloped away.

‘What is all that lot?’ Simon asked, gazing ahead with his eyes narrowed.

‘Looks like Sir Thomas Wake at the head,’ Baldwin said. ‘I know him – he’s a good man. The others, I don’t know.’

They were soon to find out. As their party reached the gates, there was a flurry of activity. Three men came and took hold of Despenser’s horse. He was forced to dismount, and while four men rode to the King and took him into the city at a brisk trot, Despenser had the tunic ripped from his back and chest, and was forced to stand still while a fresh tunic was placed over his head.

‘What’s that?’ Simon asked, peering. His eyes had not recovered their full vigour yet, and trying to focus from here was giving him a fresh headache.

‘They have made a tunic with his arms reversed,’ Baldwin said, his voice hushed. ‘His arms are destroyed.’

‘Oh?’ Simon said.

‘Yes. “Oh”. It means his place in the nobility will cease to exist,’ Baldwin said.

Simon nodded, and then, ‘What now?’

‘They are writing on him,’ Baldwin said. It was impossible to hear what was being said, but someone had tied his wrists, and now men with reeds and inks were scrawling all over Despenser’s back, sometimes straying onto his neck and bare shoulders, while the man stood whey-faced and uncommunicative. Around him was a growing crowd who taunted him and laughed. Then a crown of green nettles was brought and rammed on his head. That brought on a reaction: he writhed with pain as the stings burned his brow and temples.

He was not alone. Baldock also had his tunic cut from him, and naked, he was clothed in his own arms reversed, with his own crown of nettles shoved hard over his brow. Despenser’s herald, Simon of Reading, was given a banner, but he refused to accept it, his face showing his revulsion.

‘It’s got Despenser’s arms reversed, too,’ Baldwin answered before Simon could ask.

It did not work. Simon of Reading was forced to take up the banner, and then Despenser was given a miserable hack to ride into the town. It was mangy, thin and spavined, and looked as though it could scarcely bear his weight, but then Simon of Reading was beaten and prodded with swords until he led the way into the city, Baldock and Despenser following.

Simon and Baldwin could hear the crowds inside the city. There was jeering, cat-calling, and rotten fruit was thrown, and eggs, at the unfortunate trio. For the most part, when Baldwin caught glimpses of him, Despenser was sitting stiff-backed on his nag – oblivious, apparently, to the missiles and taunts.

There was a justifiable hatred of this man, but Baldwin felt alarmed at the way that the people of the town were responding to him, this despot who only weeks ago would have had them trembling with terror by merely looking at them. Now, in the hour of his downfall, they were happy to throw all caution to the winds and shame him for their pleasure. It was foul to witness, and Baldwin wondered if Mortimer realised that this crowd, which was learning to insult its betters with impunity, could all too easily turn on him as well, given the opportunity. To see women screeching abuse, their children joining in, and men with their faces twisted with loathing, was not an edifying sight.

They were taken to the market square. This was where judgement was to be declared.

The names of the judges were read. The Earl of Lancaster was there, and the Earl of Kent, and Thomas Wake, as well as the other man from the gate, Jean de Hainault, and, of course, Sir Roger Mortimer. Set slightly aside, sat Queen Isabella and her son, the Duke of Aquitaine.

Despenser was commanded to be silent. There was to be no defence to the clear and manifest crimes of which he was accused. No man was asked to speak for him, and instead a series of charges were read out to the suddenly quiet market square.

Baldwin found himself distracted by the gaily-coloured flags which fluttered about in the breeze. He thought how festive the square looked, as if it was a holiday, so wonderfully at odds with the terrible scene now playing out in front of him. The silence, apart from the wind and the voice relentlessly reading the charges, gave a feeling of unreality. Looking up, in a window in a tower overlooking the square, he saw a face wearing a rictus of perfect horror.

‘The King!’ he whispered.

King Edward II stared down at the square and felt his breast and belly melt in fear.

They wouldn’t, they couldn’t kill his Hugh, his lovely Hugh. The man was not guilty of these crimes they were inexorably listing. They were saying that Hugh had left Isabella, his Queen, alone at Tynemouth when the Scottish were attacking. That was unfair! Sir Hugh had tried to reach her, but he couldn’t because of the numbers of Scots in the area. And she had escaped anyway, climbing aboard a ship at the last minute. He craned to listen. What was that? That he had granted the Earldom of Winchester to his father? That wasn’t his doing, it was the King’s action! What now? That he had stopped the King from travelling to France to pay homage for Aquitaine, to the detriment of the kingdom? Ridiculous No! No! This was a travesty!

Down there in the square he could see poor Hugh, standing so still and calm, like a saint before his martyrdom. Like Christ Himself with his shameful crown while the hideous wretches all about him revelled in his pain.

Then the words he had been dreading came up to him. There was not even a pause to give the pretence that Sir Hugh was being judged. Instead, they went straight to the judgement from reading the list of charges. He was to be hanged, drawn, castrated, quartered, and his rank and nobility would die with him.

No, no, no, no…

Baldwin heard the last words: ‘Go to your fate, traitor, tyrant, renegade; go to your own justice, traitor, evil man, criminal!’

All Baldwin could see was the King’s face. The expression on his drawn features tore into the knight’s heart. He had sworn to aid Sir Hugh if the King could not, and now he was forced to witness and do nothing. It felt shameful.

Despenser was no longer a knight. Stripped of rank and chivalry, he was pushed and beaten to a sledge, where he was forced to lie, his hands tied to the topmost rail, and four horses dragged him over the cobbles, bumping and rattling, past people who spat and laughed at his anguish.

All were to follow. Baldwin was drawn along with the others as the crowd surged after him, and he noticed that guards were all watching him and the other men from the King’s last servants as though they were expected to launch themselves at Sir Hugh and Simon of Reading in an attempt to rescue them. There was no chance of that.

They went along the lanes, winding this way and that until they were by the castle walls.

Baldwin saw it all. Hugh was cut from the hurdle and stripped beside a fire, then with his hands still bound, he was helped up the ladder to the scaffold, the rope fitted about his neck, and hanged from a gallows high up until he was almost dead, face swollen, eyes popping, legs thrashing. When his struggling slowed, he was cut